


invitation to a new life

by ghostinthebook



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Family, Lydia Branwell is mentioned, M/M, POV Magnus Bane, Parents Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, it's about 1x12 but doesn't take place during that, maia and taki's are also mentioned near the end, so that's fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 23:32:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19119967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostinthebook/pseuds/ghostinthebook
Summary: While spring cleaning, Max finds something strange (it's not the note).





	invitation to a new life

**Author's Note:**

> as you may be able to tell, summer just started, and i'm in a really big writing mood, so i'm working through my ideas list. this fic is pretty much just the TV show, except for the fact that Max and Rafael are there and i kinda ignored the one-year-later epilogue? anyway, hope you enjoy!!!!

It was time to clean the loft, something Magnus really wasn’t looking forward to.

Easy enough to clean when one has magic, right? Well, when one has kids, and has to show a good example, it means doing some things without magic.

Like spring cleaning.

Ugh.

At least Alec was here, Magnus thought. Alec’s cleaning too, and the kids are helping, and then the loft will be even better than it is at the moment.

“Where does this go?” Rafe asked. He was holding a colander. If that wasn’t in the kitchen, Magnus doesn’t want to know where it was.

“Kitchen, bottom cabinet, by the sink,” Magnus said. Rafe went to go put it there. Magnus was putting their bookshelf in the right order, Alec was sorting either Max or Rafe’s closet, and Max was somewhere around the house. There was only a half chance that he was actually cleaning. He was six years old, anything could be happening.

“Max!” he called out. If Max wasn’t cleaning yet, he could at least give him a small job to do. Even if it’s just helping Rafe. He soon heard Max put down whatever he had been holding and go into the living room.

“Yeah, Papa?” Max said. He looked like he’d rather be doing anything else right now. Magnus could relate, but he had to be the adult right now. The joys of fatherhood, Magnus thought sarcastically.

“Can you grab the stack of papers in the top right drawer of my desk?” he asked. He was done sorting the bookshelf, so might as well go through his catalog of items in his apothecary. He needed to see what needed to be restocked.

“Yeah,” Max said, then walked in the direction of the apothecary. Alec came out of Rafe’s room holding a small pile of clothes.

“This stuff is too small, I’ll put it here to see if Max wants any of it,” he said, putting the clothes down on the table. Alec then went to go see what Rafe was doing.

Max came back from the apothecary without the stack of papers. He was holding one, small, card-sized piece of paper. He looked confused.

For a second, Magnus was scared that he had found the note. The note that he was abandoned with, that asked “who could ever love it’. But that couldn’t be it. Magnus didn’t keep that note in the apothecary, and there would be a different set of emotions on his face if he did. More sadness, less confusion.

Honestly, now Magnus thinks that Max had found a note that Magnus had left for Alec on a day that Max and Rafe were being watched by Maryse. In which case, he hoped that it would go over Max’s head. He didn’t want to explain what all those words meant yet.

“What’s this, Papa?” Max asked, handing it over. Magnus looked at the card.

Oh.

He forgot he had kept that in the apothecary.

It was the invitation to Alec and Lydia’s wedding. The one he had crashed. Where he first kissed Alec, and Alec got his first kiss ever. Where Alec came out to everyone in the most explosive fashion.

That day was one of the best in Magnus’s life, looking back.

And, it was a day that their kids still, somehow, knew nothing about. He doubts that they had even met Lydia, since she’s busy enough with her own Institute.

Huh.

Max was still looking at Magnus with confusion, still expecting an answer.

“Alec!” he called out to the house. He didn’t want to have to explain this alone. Alec came into the living room, Rafe following him.

“Yeah?” Alec asked. Magnus handed him the invitation. Alec’s eyebrows shot up.

“Oh,” he said, surprised. Magnus thinks that Alec wasn’t sure that he kept it. He had definitely kept their own wedding invitation, and put it in a much better place than a drawer in his desk in the apothecary. But why wouldn’t he have kept the first one? It represented the start of their relationship, to Magnus. The first time he thought, this is actually happening. Before, it was just hopes. Then, it was his hopes becoming real.

So, yeah. He kept it.

“Shall we explain what this is now?” Magnus asked, whispering as he did. If Alec wanted to put off the conversation a bit longer, they’d figure out a way to do so.

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Alec whispered back, then said at a normal volume, “Max, Rafe, want to sit down on the couch now? I’ll say what this is.”

Max and Rafe sat on the couch. Both of them looked very confused, confused enough to not even know where to start with the questions. That was probably the only reason they were mostly silent right now. Magnus and Alec sat across from them.

“Okay,” Alec started. “Before I met your Papa, I hid the fact that I liked boys. A lot of people wouldn’t have liked that fact, and I wasn’t ready to deal with them. So, when I met this girl named Lydia, and I saw that we had similar goals, I asked her to marry me. And before you ask questions about that,” Alec said, noticing their very surprised and question-filled faces, “that is not a good reason to marry someone. You marry someone because you love them, like me and Papa,” he said, glancing at Magnus quickly with affection in his eyes.

“I had asked her after I met your Papa, and he really didn’t like what I was doing. He knew I was making a big mistake. So, when the time for the wedding came, he went to the wedding. Walked right into the middle of the aisle, giving me a choice between him or Lydia, living the truth or living a lie.”

“What did you do, Daddy?” Max asked, totally captured into the story. Rafe seemed to have already figured out what happened next, and he was smiling.

“I walked right up to Papa and gave him a big kiss, in front of everybody. I stopped pretending I was someone who I wasn’t. I chose Papa.”

When he said that last sentence, he was staring right at Magnus.

He loved that man.

Magnus leaned forward and gave Alec a kiss. The kiss was pretty quick, and there were no wandering hands, because they knew they were in front of their children. There was only so much they could do with their sons right there.

“Ew,” Max said. Rafe echoed it. Even though less than a minute ago they were smiling wide at the story of how their parents had gotten together.

Again, Magnus thought, the joys of fatherhood.

“Okay,” he said, turning back to the kids. “Let’s get back to cleaning, and once we’re done, we can have dinner out?”

The boys were happy about that, obviously, given that they ran back to what they were doing before. The cleaning was almost done, and they knew that.

“So,” Magnus started, looking at Alec. “Where should we have dinner? Should we Portal or just go to Taki’s, you know how much they love that place.”

Alec thought about that for a second.

“Taki’s,” he answered. “I haven’t seen Maia in a while, maybe she’ll be there tonight. And you wouldn’t have to glamor Max.”

“Okay,” Magnus said. “Taki’s it is. Shall we get back to cleaning now, so the kids don’t blame us for delaying dinner?’

“Sure. I’ll go work on Max’s closet. Love you,” he said, still looking at Magnus as he walked away.

“Love you too,” Magnus responded. He walked over to the apothecary, and put the invitation back in the drawer. He grabbed the stack of papers Max was supposed to grab (in the drawer next to it), and went back into the living room, starting to work on it.

He hadn’t been to many weddings, in the past century, before that one. He had his walls up, and not many friends that weren’t warlocks. And warlocks tended to not marry.

Looking at the ring on his hand, he thought, not this warlock.


End file.
